


Brave New World

by xxCopyCatxx



Category: DCU (Comics), White Collar
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Crossover, Gen, Non-Canonical Character Death, Post-Forever Evil (Comics)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 16:39:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14116524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxCopyCatxx/pseuds/xxCopyCatxx
Summary: He is dead - Only his body still hurts.





	Brave New World

He is drifting through darkness, blissful nothing, truly content in the knowledge he is dead. There is no anguish, no sense of loss or righteous fury. It is what it is. His time has run up. He is dead and that's the way things are supposed to be, once you pass away and your heart and brain stop working. He -

He _is_. He is thinking, sluggishly, as if his neurons forgot how to relay electrical impulses and what they mean, but he is thinking. And there is pain worming itself through the floating numb sensation, coursing through a battered body. His body.

He can feel stones, cracked cement and splintered wood bruising his back, pressing down on his legs and chest and everything hurts. Isn't that supposed to end once you pass away? He is not certain, but a part of him vaguely remembers other pain, other bruised limbs, and those ended, didn't they? So why does it still, again hurt?

There is something soft brushing his face, the first soothing sensation he can remember. It's wet against the dust and dried blood caking his face, cleaning it away and something slobbery startles a sound out between his broken, dry lips; an anguished wheeze, a poor excuse of a cry, a name he can't remember.

His lungs protest against the air being pulled inside, alight with the raw sensation of oxygen filling them for what feels like the first time. It hurts, so much he wants to return to that floating stillness from before again, but now that they started their duty, his lungs and heart refuse to relinquish them again. They suck in more air, against his will, frantically as if they need to make up for something they lost. This is wrong, he knows instinctively, dead men don't breathe, don't think, don't feel pain…

The wet, rough patch is back to nuzzling his face in between deafeningly happy barks. He groggily opens his eyes, blinking against the sudden brightness and finds light brown fur pressed into his face, a tail tapping his leg in pure animal delight. The dog barks again, and he groans: He should be dead, but all evidence points to the opposite and finally human instinct takes over. He starts to fight free of the debris holding him down.

There are voices calling out for him, foreign but full of concern and he suddenly longs for the warm comfort of other people to chase away the last iciness of death, so he joins the dog and uses the air in his lungs and tightness in his throat to call out in return, before darkness can claim him again.

 

* * *

 

 

The next time he opens his eyes, it is easier and the tiredness weighting him down is not one of the dead but the ones' alive. Something beeps beside him, in a steady comforting rhythm he woke up to many times before. There is something comforting about the sterile white walls and the oxygenated air being pressed into his chest and the tug at his arm where the cannula is buried inside. Being in a hospital means they ultimately won - won against...

The half formed thought vanishes when a dark woman bows into view. He feels disappointment bubbling up inside himself, fear even. He expected a man with dark hair and concerned blue eyes, his father, or an older man, or his siblings or someone else, more familiar instead. Her however he doesn't know but she seems genuinely thankful at seeing him awake and he feels his lips tug into a weak smile in kind.

She shakes her head in fond exasperation: "More lives than a cat, Caffrey. I have no idea how you are still alive and survived that explosion but we’re sure glad you did. Peter is on his way. I just called him. We couldn't pull him from your side these last few days and the moment El forces him to come home, you wake up." She laughs in breathless relief. "He'll be pissed."

Caffrey, that must be him, right? He can't remember, but he doesn't have the heart to deny. The woman obviously expects a reply of him, and the tube down his throat blocks out any attempts of his, and so he, Caffrey, simply nods. Even if that's not his name, it's the one that makes the woman happy and while it doesn't carry the sensation of flying and blue wings that creep around the corners of his memory, it has a nice, elegant ring.

He fights to stay awake for the promised arrival of that other person, this Peter she speaks of but his eyes flutter shut against his will and he drifts off to the sound of her typing away at a laptop - another sound that fills him with fondness and the feeling of home, of family he can't place.

Without the confusing, foreign images clouding his sight he can almost catch that memory, see a young man in red and black garb, dark hair ruffled and sweated by the cowl that covered it during their patrol. They are in a moist place together, with strange echoes and no sky above but naked stone. It must be a cave, filled with the bright blue light of electrical equipment that lights a series of cases along the wall, each showcasing a costume - and among them his own: The emblem of a blue bird over dark armor, the memorial for another hero fallen in the line of duty. Nightwing.

The epiphany slowly sinks in, the touch ghostly, light as a snowflake - and it breaks loose an avalanche of memories to follow it, brought about by that single image and name.

Suddenly, Dick remember everything: He remembers his parents, remembers his new father Bruce and Alfred, remembers becoming Robin, then Nightwing, Batman and Nightwing again, remember others joining their crusade and becoming family. And most importantly, he remembers how he died.

He remembers the humiliation and fear of being broken and unmasked, being tied to a bomb imminent to go off and stubborn Bruce in its blast radius, too late to stop it and too close to get away. He is strapped down, unable to move a limb, knowing he will be the herald of the end, an instrument to everything he has spent his life fighting against.

Dick struggles, unable to control his breath and panic taking his senses, thrashing about in the futile attempt to save everyone: The world, his father and himself. A harsh hand forcing open his mouth and clamping down on it, and the pill inside; forcing him to swallow or suffocate. He feels its weight travel down his esophagus as his body rebels his command and feels his own heartbeat stuttering, the stony pain in his chest, feels his vision blacking out as he still struggles to free himself…

"Neal!"

Cool hands are holding him down, pressing him to the bed as he thrashes and fights for his very life.

“Neal! Calm down, I’ve got you.”

That voice doesn’t belong to Luthor and neither do those hands, comforting and worried as they are, afraid to hurt him and only firm enough to keep Dick from further injuring himself.

He opens his eyes; gaze glued to the face of the weary, worried man above him and forces himself to breathe.

“There, that’s better.”

The man sinks down onto a chair next to the bed, his hand resting on Dick’s shoulder in uncontrolled tremor and he finds comfort in the apparent shared distress and emotional unrest.

“I was afraid I’d lost you,” the man confides in him, so soft Dick barely catches it and his heart clenches in response, overwhelmed by the sudden knowledge, that he wasn’t so lucky. One life had to be paid to save everyone else - and it had ended up being his: He lost _everything_. Only he isn't dead but in this hospital with people he doesn't know, who call him Neal and Caffrey. Irrefutably Dick _knows_ that that other man, the one those names belonged to died too, and that Dick will never again be able to return home.

Tears he can’t stop prick at his eyes and in that moment of weakness he gives in to the temptation of comforting touches and eyes full of hope and comradery and having a place to belong. He pushes into the cool hand cradling and caressing his scalp and fights to lift his own hands in return, hands that miss the strength and calluses he trained into them, to latch onto that stranger’s arm like it is a lifeline and he is drowning.

"Peter," he breathes around the tube, intelligible but enough for the man's grey face to light up and Dick almost stops feeling guilty for taking another’s place in the revelry of causing such joy.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This started as the cracky idea that Dick somehow woke in his AU-self's body, trying to hide his lack of knowledge by acting the part of the charming conman everyone knows him to be - and ended as this thoroughly depressing mess. I honestly don't even know how that happened ._.


End file.
